4-by-4 post-mortem

May 25, 2012

4-by-4 post-mortem

Veteran sportswriter and Euroleague.net collaborator Vladimir Stankovic has been following the best basketball on the continent longer than almost anyone journalist, writing for decades about the sport in major publications in both Serbia and Spain. For the new 2009-10 season, he offers a series of opinion blogs about what's happening on and off the court in the Euroleague.

The 2010 Final Four, as the culmination of a great Euroleague season, confirmed several predictions. For instance:

- Regal FC Barcelona was the best team.
- Olympiacos has more the best players than the best team.
- CSKA Moscow is still way up there despite the budget cuts.
- Partizan Belgrade more than justified its place at the Final Four.

Each of the four teams can draw positive conclusions, too:

- Barca has shown quality, maturity and an ability to withstand pressure.
- Olympiacos improved its final standing as compared to Berlin 2009, where it finished fourth, and now hopes that a third consecutive Final Four qualification, if it happens next season, will be the charm.
- CSKA, with a Russian coach (Evgeniy Pashutin) and several local players (Viktor Khryapa, Sasha Kaun, Andrey Vorontsevich) showed that it doesn't depend solely on foreign stars.
- Partizan has demonstrated plenty, even losing twice in overtime, because it achieved something rare: getting talked about more in defeat than its opponents were in victory.

Starting from here, each will have homework for next season:

- Barcelona will face the fact that it is more difficult to defend a title than to win one.
- The Reds will face doubts about the future of such an expensive roster.
- CSKA will have to decide whether being at the Final Four is success enough, or whether it wants to upgrade in order to win the title again.
- Partizan must try to preserve its roster, a difficult task due to the market's interest in talented players and its own lack of signing power.

Back to the start, the things that really struck me about these four teams were:

- Barcelona's balance. Their roster is the perfect example of how to spend money well, if you have it. There is no difference among the local players and the foreigners, between the inside and outside players, between starters and substitutes. Juan Carlos Navarro, the Final Four MVP, is the star for the media, indeed, but in that roster he is only one among many. If the signings are the great work of Joan Creus, the style of play and the relationships inside the lockerroom are the masterpiece of the young and evidently talented coach Xavi Pascual.
- The individual talent of Olympiacos. The Greek club will have to analyze why a team as full as stars as this one was so helpless in the Final. Still, nobody can doubt Theo Papaloukas's genius, the talent of the season MVP, Milos Teodosc, the quality of Josh Childress, Linas Kleiza's scoring ability, the sheer strength of Sofoklis Schortsanitis, Nikola Vujcic's experience, the abilities of Ioannis Bourousis, etc....
- The great scoring abilities of Trajan Langdon and Ramunas Siskauskas for CSKA Moscow. Since the days of Nikos Galis, who scored 43 points against Partizan in the first Fnial Four of 1988, no player scored as many points as Langdon's 32 in the third-place game. And he made it look easy! The same thing can be said about the great Lithuanian shooter Siskauskas. Langdon and Siskauskas form a lethal duo, no doubt about it.
- The talent and heart of Partizan. In the system established by coach Dusko Vujosevic one can find many things, but the one thing that stands out is talent. With the results of this season, there is no doubt that Partizan has strengthened the foundation for next season and beyond. There will be more stability, probably more money, a majority of players will stay and there will be new signings to strengthen the team, first at a local level and, if necessary, the club will look to foreign players, for whom Partizan seems to have a perfect eye.

Additionally, I wish to highlight the excitement of the games and the fans at the Final Four. Never before had a team in the Final Four played overtime in both of its games, as Partizan did in Paris. During the long history of the Final Four, 23 years, there had only been four overtimes overall: in 2004 in Tel Aviv, Skipper Bologna and Montepaschi Siena needed an extra session in their semifinal; in 2005 in Moscow, CSKA and Panathinaikos played two extra sessions to decide who finished third; while in 2008 in Madrid, Montepaschi Siena and Tau Ceramica also played an extra five minutes to settle their consolation game.

The fans are a story all their own. The many Americans who came to Paris were utterly impressed with the relationship between the fans and their teams. It's another kind of love, unknown to fans in America, who at the most seem to shout, between hamburger bites, "De-fense, de-fense".

Finally, I want to mention the emergence of the new breed of coaches taking over the benches. The new champs are coached by a young boss, Xavi Pascual, 37, who is on his third year only as head coach. CSKA Moscow is led by Evgeny Pashutin, 42, in his second year as coach. The veteran coaches like Panagiotis Giannakis and Dusko Vujosevic had to give in to their younger colleagues this time, but I am sure they have not uttered their last words. The 2010-11 season is a challenge for everyone, even for the Euroleague itself as it tries to improve on the impressive 197 countries where television showed the Final Four from Paris last week, as a fitting end to a thrilling season!

POSTED BY

Vladimir Stankovic, Euroleague.net

DATE:

Saturday, May 15, 2010